Paper short abstract:

This paper envisages discussing how immateriality and intangibility are affecting education at large and the university in particular, including our relations with temporality, whether or not they result from dematerialization, corrosion or extinction processes.

Paper long abstract:

Brazil became top ranked country at the 2020 United Nations E-Government Development Index, regarding the digitalization of information and e-governance in economics, public administration, baking, education etc. Less information circulating in printed format is largely associated to ideas of progress and future, even if narratives of development and future have vanished from Brazil’s political and economic agenda. The outbreak of Covid-19 had an impact on it, changing our relationship with regimes of time and our ability to plan for future times.

This paper is part of an ongoing project observing the effects of changing temporal regimes, to focus on mapping and analyzing the impact of the pandemic on the Brazilian educational capacity, considering: 1) the consequences for the maintenance of different scientific fields (humanities, life sciences and engineering); and 2) the capacity of resilience of the Brazilian scientific production, expressed in the willingness to form new generations. Among the expected impacts are: a) the generation of instruments that help universities and scientific and educational authorities to promote programs to defend and promote scientific education; b) the creation of mechanisms to mitigate the impact of the pandemic on the interruption of careers and life cycles of scientists in training, and c) the materiality of the university and activities related to education.